Furloughs Cometh to the UC System
Everybody knows that the California budget is in the toilet and has been for some time. Sure, part of that is due to the bad economy that we’re all experiencing. But it’s also because California legislators don’t know how to compromise. I have rarely seen the affects of drastic things occurring in government in my own daily life, but here it is. I haven’t had to go into the DMV when it’s been closed to save money, but now my school is being affected. Because of a huge reduction in state funding, the UC system (one of the most prestigious state school systems in the country) must fill an $813 million budget gap. Twenty five percent of that gap is going to be filled with staff furloughs (mandatory unpaid time off), between 4 to 10 percent reductions depending on pay scale.
For regular time-sheet, clock-in/clock-out sort of staff, it’s not too difficult to figure out how to take away 7% of your time. Leave earlier on Friday or whatever, while your work piles up. What does it look like for faculty? I’m guessing in many cases, as at other institutions, this will simply mean that profs will put in the same amount of time for less money. One faculty member told me that he may just leave his class sessions 7% early as a kind of protest. The students are going to feel it one way or another. One possible response for the faculty is that they will simply leave.
I guess the UC system went through a similar sort of process in the early 90s and lots of quality faculty went seeking greener pastures. Only recently have some departments gotten themselves back up to full strength. UCLA’s student newspaper, The Daily Bruin, shares a quote from Mark Krumholz who spearheaded a letter signed by 300 UC faculty members warning of the dangers of divesting in the UC: “Krumholz added that while the amount of faculty leaving this year will only be a ‘trickle, . . . if the institution isn’t turned around, next year it’ll be a flood.’” For doctoral students who came to the school for the faculty, that’s bad news.
In addition, class sizes are larger and there are fewer Teaching Assistants. I am extremely grateful to have received a TAship for the fall, but the winter and spring quarters are a big question mark.
From where I sit, the political standoffs of Sacramento don’t seem worth the sacrifices of one of the state’s greatest public institutions.
For some additional details, see this letter released today by UCLA Chancellor Block.
Student Excuses in the Digital Age
This is an interesting phenomenon. It’s the night before the final exam. As it nears midnight, I receive two emails frantically distributed to the entire lecture course for “History of Early Christians”–the class for which I am a reader (that is, a grader). That’s an email plea to about 120 people.
The first student says that his computer “blue-screened” him. So, he can’t get the study guide that he has been preparing for the last few days, nor his notes for the class. The second email contained an explanation of how his flash drive was stolen from the computer lab earlier today. Normally, he sends an email to himself with the files for a backup, but alas, this time he did not. Both acknowledge how hard many of the other students have worked and how unfair it seems to send their hard work along. But they both ask for understanding and look for empathy: “I wish you would put yourself in my situation.”
Who am I to judge whether these apparently otherwise responsible and capable students have really just hit a snag at a very inconvenient moment? After all, I don’t have Sylar’s new ability from this past week (does that work for emails?). It all seems very suspicious to me, though. And I’m inclined to say, “Well, you’ve studied on these things for days. Go with the hard work you’ve already put into it. With that much hard work, you must remember something.” But the reality is, with 120 other students, you’re going to get a few generous people who will indeed share their hard work.
Even if these pleas are both hoaxes, they will probably be successful. Trouble is, how will they know whether the study guides they receive are reliable?
I’d be interested to know what professors do these days with the various digital excuses that come their way. Do tell.
Update (12/11/08): Another student sent the following satire to the class:
I totally did not do any of the work this quarter. I just watched tv and went to the movies. i guess i am just lazy, or incompetent. i didnt read anything except cracked.com‘s top ten most underated smurfs. Please find it in your heart of hearts to send me your complete study guide with all of the answers you tirelessly worked on for hours. I totally don’t do this every quarter in every class. i know its asking a lot but…
What would jesus do?
cmon seriously. I voted for Barack Obama! and against Prop 8!!
turn my water into wine.
a fellow Christian Classmate
Latin American Journey: Insights for Christian Education in North America by Robert W. Pazmiño
I would like to draw your attention to one more book on Christian education, this one from the perspective of a North American Hispanic man (my last post highlighted a Christian education book by an African American woman). Robert Pazmiño is a professor of religious education at Andover Newton Theological School, who felt inspired to learn more about his Latin American roots with his family. He journeys to Costa Rica and his ancestral homeland of Ecuador. The resulting book is a way of applying his lessons learned on that journey to his profession in equipping Christian educators.
In the first two chapters, Pazmiño reviews Latin American liberation theology, particularly those ideas related to pedagogy. He discusses the threats (“destroyers”) to life as God intended and calls to action as proclaimed by folks like Gutierrez, Boff, Guillermo Cook, and Orlando Costas. His discussion of education and its relationship to liberation theology appropriately centers on the work of Paulo Freire.
Pazmiño takes the rest of the book to flesh out what those theories look like in North American Christian education. He outlines how lessons from liberation theology help us in leading transformative Christian education. He also provides the reader with a tremendous resource for wrestling with multicultural challenges in North America. Any educator in the church would be wise to tackle this book along with Wimberly’s (see last post) in order to consider out-of-the-box ways of approaching educational ministry. As for me, I will be looking for ways to adapt these insights into the academic classroom in my search for creative pedagogy.
Soul Stories: African American Christian Education by Anne E. Streaty Wimberly
Continuing the theme of education from my last several posts, I’d like to take a moment to review a book that explores a particular angle on pedagogy for the African American community. Anne E. Streaty Wimberly’s book, Soul Stories, pays attention to the importance of connecting narratives, what she calls “story-linking.” Specifically, Wimberly suggests that one way to help people move towards ethical living in Christian education is by examining the relationships between an individual’s story with biblical narratives and also with the stories from their African American heritage.
The first phase of the story-linking process is somewhat autobiographical and introspective. The student/participant considers her identity, her social contexts, her relationships, key events in her life, and the basic meanings that she assigns her life. In the second phase, the leader/teacher guides participants through biblical passages, engaging them in ways that help participants “enter into a partnership” with the biblical characters. They also begin to envision God’s action today in light of the passage and their ongoing response to God. As a biblical scholar in training, this second phase makes me the most nervous, but I also recognize that it is perhaps the most important.
Phase three is what makes this approach somewhat different than the typical “Bible study” of a traditional Caucasian church (I can’t speak to what Christian education actually looks like in African American churches). This is where participants engage in exemplars of the past, both widely known and local heroes of faith in action, with whom they can identify. Finally, phase four is when the leader helps the participants to gather all of these stories and develop them into a way of discerning God’s call for ethical decision making today.
As you might notice, the process need not be limited to African American communities, though the way Wimberly engages her own African American heritage is insightful and instructive for other communities. Every person has a heritage that they can draw from which to draw in this process. There will surely be challenges in discerning meaning in biblical stories, as there would be with any study of the Bible at the lay level. One potential danger is that participants will simply mine biblical texts for images of themselves, rather than being challenged and convicted by them. There would certainly be hurdles in multicultural situations, but such hurdles may make the story-linking even more beneficial. The process may take some creativity for those who do not know much about their heritage. In the end, though, it’s a process seriously worth considering for all sorts of educational contexts and Wimberly’s book is a helpful jumpstart.
Dynamics of the Classroom/Congregation
During this quarter, part of the home stretch in my seminary career, I have been thinking about education in the context of a congregation. In “The Congregation as Learning Community,” we’ve been emphasizing a holistic kind of education, using buzzwords like “discipleship” and “missional church.” I came into the class thinking that we’d be mostly covering practical aspects of education within a church. But we spent a great deal of time thinking more about the purpose of the congregation and the people who fill it. We should not merely be dumping information into people’s minds, but educational leaders in the church should be guiding and equipping people in becoming transformed disciples.
It makes me wonder: how do we conceive of the student in the classroom? It seems like its easy to forget that students are whole human beings and not just warm bodies behind desks, or numbers on an excel spreadsheet. I have often thought of my pursued vocation as not only a professor, but as a pastoral kind of professor. If I connect the dots, then, I should broaden or deepen my understanding of the people I will be teaching in the future. I should also broaden or deepen my understanding of what my role is as a future educator.
“Disciple,” after all, is just another word for “learner” or “student.” Isn’t it natural to connect the dots between the two? Just like at any church, there will be a hundred different things on the minds of those who show up. Just like at any church, those who come are hoping to “get something out of it” for themselves. What if we could transform a classroom in the kinds of ways that the “missional church” movement is trying to transform the church? How can we not only engage the minds of students but provoke them towards action? How do we not only impart information but also help students to grapple with cultural implications to what they are learning? How do we make contextual connections inside and outside the classroom? I am certain the answers will differ from one topic or classroom to the next. But I think it’s good for me to start asking these questions before I dive headfirst into life as a full-time educator.
Do you know of any biblioblogs that . . . ?
A friend of mine asked this question:
Pat, do you know of any biblioblogs that deal particularly with…
1) teaching biblical studies in general
2) using tech in biblical studies ed (e.g. class wikis, PPT, Blackboard, etc.)?
So, I put the question to you all. What do you think? My friend is especially interesting in Hebrew Bible and ANE stuff, I think. But it sounds like he’s open to broader topics in biblical studies too.
Doing a quick search of biblioblogs (or biblicablogs, if you prefer) on the words “pedagogy,” “education,” “teaching” and the like (especially combined with “tech” or “technology” or one of the specifics he mentioned), as well as leaning on my gut, here are some possibilities coming to mind (in no particular order):
- Tim Bulkeley’s SansBlogue
- Chris Heard’s Higgaion
- John Hobbins’ Ancient Hebrew Poetry
- Mark Goodacre’s NT Gateway
- A. K. M. Adam’s AKMA’s Random Thoughts
- The now-defunct Bible Software Review blog would’ve been an option
- There are some of these topics also dispersed at Awilum, PaleoJudaica, Hypotyposeis, Blue Cord, etc. They are topics that hit close to home for bibliobloggers, so one would expect a lot of talk about them. But I think the ones I listed above probably touch on my friend’s questions the most.
- I would suggest doing a search of biblioblogs for these topics with the customized biblioblog search (also, this one).
Any corrections or additions?
Christian High School Student Sues his Teacher for "Anti-Christian" Remarks
Okay, so when I was a fundamentalist high school student, sure, I felt like I was an oppressed minority. This is the nature of fundamentalism, you think that your group (no matter how big) is a small minority facing attacks from all sides. So, all comments, especially from authority figures, are subject to this filter that is actively searching for “Anti-Christian” attacks. Now, I don’t know if this kid is actually a fundamentalist, but he and his parents seem to at least be acting with this “minoritized” suspicion.
A LA Times article reports an ongoing story at Capistrano Valley High in Orange County, noting that 16 year-old Chad Farnan, along with his parents, “filed a lawsuit alleging that [James] Corbett[, an Advanced Placement European history teacher,] had violated the student’s constitutional rights by making ‘highly inappropriate’ and offensive statements in class regarding Christianity.” What were the allegedly offensive statements?
At the heart of the Farnans’ lawsuit is a tape recording from what they said is a class lesson Corbett taught Oct. 19. The lawsuit notes that Corbett told students that “when you put on your Jesus glasses, you can’t see the truth,” and that religion is not “connected with morality.”
Hmmm. Well, perhaps the teacher could benefit from using a little more sensitivity and, well, precision in his comments. Unfortunately, we don’t have a transcript of what he was talking about, but as one perceptive supporter of the teacher points out in the article: “It’s hard to teach European history without being somewhat critical of organized religion. But aren’t we supposed to learn from our mistakes? Isn’t that why we study history?” The article also references a Quaker student and an Irish Roman Catholic student who have not been offended by any the history teacher’s remarks. The Catholic student adds: “For hundreds of years the church was corrupt, and that has to be discussed.”
I can certainly imagine a context in which the teacher is raising legitimate concerns about corruption in the religious institutions of European history. For example, let’s say that part of the lesson for the day is this: The state churches of Europe were not interested in worshiping God, but rather protecting their power. For the religious institution, religion was not “connected with morality.” Many Christians today don’t recognize the corruption of the church’s past because they are trying to see church history through rose-colored glasses. But we have to recognize the truth of history and “when you put on your Jesus glasses, you can’t see the truth.”
This is the context within which I imagine the teacher giving his comments. Like I mentioned, he probably could have been a little more careful about the way he made the comments, but if he said something like I imagine, then he’s raising a valid point about ideological presuppositions when studying history. It seems to me that an Advanced Placement course should address the issue of preconceived notions in historical investigation.
The article highlights the 300 or so supports outside the school rallying on behalf of the teacher, Dr. Corbett. They have cool signs like, “Who would Jesus sue?” I like that one. They also talk about a Southern Baptist pastor, Wiley S. Drake, in the crowd recording interviews with the supporters for his Internet radio show. Drake is a guy, by the way, who has called his own supporters to pray for his critics to die (see here too–so much for Jesus asking us to love our “enemies”). His comments for the LA Times article are entirely in line with the attitude I mention at the beginning of this post: “I’m tired of being criticized and ostracized for being a Christian. I’m glad Chad filed his suit. It’s time we Christians fought back.”
It’s this “fighting” mentality that leads this situation in to a frenzied circus. I don’t know the context, so I’m like every other observer, but I would think that a civil conversation with the teacher would do the trick. I’m not proud of the fact that I was a creationist in high school, but a friend and I raised concerns with my high school psychology teacher about how she talked about evolution “as if it were fact” (those were my words at the time). She told us that she had thought about the issue of creationism and was sensitive to our concerns. She just didn’t see the evidence for creationism, but she’d be willing to take a look at any evidence we might have had. No law suit. Just a conversation. And it worked out okay. And I changed my mind when I got to college anyway, so I completely agree with her now.
I know that it’s tempting to see the world against you as a Christian high schooler at a public school, but honestly, I’d hope that a Christian school would give you the same kind of critical reflection on the history of the church. Christians shouldn’t feel they have to defend all the despicable acts of Christian history. I can only hope that the fever dies down and conservative Christians start to see that “fighting” is not as productive as conversing. Who knows, people might actually learn something from the conversation.
Update (12/23/07): See some reflections on this article and my post over at if i were a bell, i’d ring.
Update (12/28/07): See this editorial at the LA Times.
TCU Prof Accused of Making "Terroristic Threats"
Disturbing news from Inside Higher Ed about a prof at Texas Christian University:
Charles F. Bond Jr., 53, was arrested at his home on Saturday by Fort Worth Police after officers received a warrant by TCU Police detailing charges against the professor. A statement from the university says that Bond “exhibited extremely inappropriate conduct and made threatening remarks to some campus members.”
[ . . . ]
According to police reports, Bond hinted in an e-mail about bringing a submachine gun on campus. An arrest warrant affidavit cited by The Dallas Morning News said that Bond sent out harassing e-mail messages to a number of university employees last month, and made a statement saying he would spit in a colleague’s face. TCU officials would not confirm that those allegedly targeted were employees, nor would they expand on the nature of the alleged threats.
According to the affidavit, TCU already was investigating Bond and had asked him to stop communications with anyone at the university. When TCU officials requested that Bond meet with them, he refused, according to the affidavit. Then, last week, he allegedly sent an e-mail stating: “Is it possible a sexist could snap and bring an ouzi [sic] gun on the TCU campus? Might he target young women? Might others get in the way?”
Bond’s lawyers said that Bond “has had some health issues lately that may have hampered his ability to effectively communicate his message, and perhaps he was misinterpreted.” Patrick J. McLain, one of the lawyers, said the case “bears little to no resemblance to the Cho case at Virginia Tech.”
Bond has taught at TCU for more than 20 years. According to his university Web page, he specializes in quantitative psychology and social psychology, with a research emphasis on deception, which he says has drawn interest from the FBI and CIA.
Bond taught a fall course called “The Truth About Lies,” which, according to the syllabus, focused on the psychology of human deception.
College presidents plan 'U.S. News' rankings boycott
This Christian Science Monitor article is interesting food for thought. I don’t think that the US News rankings would be my own personal ranking system, but on the other hand, there is certainly a “top tier” of schools. For many of the schools in the top tier, I’m not sure it matters whether you go to, say, #8 instead of #6. It depends on what you’re looking for in a school. And the big, choosier schools will not necessarily get you a better education either. I went to a smaller school and got mentoring attention from my professors that I never would have gotten at the really big schools. But then, the top tier schools give you this flashy school name on your resume. That there is brand name flashiness (perhaps where not always deserved) is not the fault of US News rankings. That’s just how our system works. So I’m mixed about the rankings. As long as they’re taken with a grain of salt, not much harm done. It’d be interesting to see how they would rank Religion programs, which I’ve never seen them do.
Update (05/07/07): See also this article released today by Inside Higher Ed.
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Elsewhere . . .- Blog titles beginning with "A" to "Z" on your reader Mark Goodacre
- Of making many books there is no end Chris Brady
- Free Online: The Liddell-Scott Jones Lexicon S and C
- Does Higher Criticism Attempt to “Destroy the Bible”? II agathos
- Steven J. Friesen and the Identity of Satan’s Throne in Pergamum alan
- Does Higher Criticism Attempt to “Destroy the Bible”? agathos
- Bloomsbury buys Continuum Mark Goodacre
- Imperial America Peter J. Leithart
- C.F.D. Moule on the Birth of the New Testament d. miller
- Responding to Kostenberger (with comparisons to Marshall) Jeremiah
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